


There's New Grass On The Field

by em2mb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Baseball, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Gift Fic, The Farmhouse Doesn't Exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-17 22:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7288549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em2mb/pseuds/em2mb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“I thought you hated baseball,” Clint says as they ride the Metro to the game.</em>
</p>
<p>  <em>Natasha shrugs, which is about as close as she ever comes to expressing an opinion. “I want to see Steve’s face when he realizes a beer costs $17.50.”</em></p>
<p>Five times Clint and Natasha went to a baseball game, and one time ... well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's New Grass On The Field

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frommybookbook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frommybookbook/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY LOVE! (You have no idea how hard it was to write one without your input.)

**(1)**

The first time Clint and Natasha end up on the Jumbotron, it almost blows their cover. 

They’ve spent three days tailing a Venezuelan oil executive whose hobbies include kidnapping American tourists and holding them for ransom, and Clint’s been itching to shoot an arrow through the guy for two of them. Personally, Natasha agrees with Clint - she’d just as soon cut oil exec’s brake line and be done with it - but S.H.I.E.L.D. has  _ rules _ about this sort of thing. Surveillance only, no hits on U.S. soil. Clint perks up considerably when their kidnapper makes plans to meet up with some colleagues at Nationals Park and Coulson begins to hum “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” over comms.

Clint loves baseball.

Natasha might love baseball, too, if it weren’t played outdoors in August in the sweltering heat. Her makeup begins to melt before first pitch. By the fifth inning, she’s sunburnt and considering stealing Clint’s hat, though it’s bound to clash horribly with her hair. She glares contemptuously at the dugout suite, where their mark sits in the shade, chattering about the salary of the team’s Venezuelan players. Next to her, Clint rips into another bag of peanuts.

They’re minding their own business (well, Natasha is at any rate, Clint’s littering the ground with shells) when the people around the start to point and laugh. It takes her two seconds - a second longer than it should - to see that they’re on the Kiss Cam.

She’s kissed Clint before, for missions and not, and when his tongue pushes at the seam of her mouth, she parts her lips to the taste of cheap beer. The people around them cheer. The weight of his arm settles across her shoulders.

“Here,” Clint says with an easy grin, dropping his sweat-stained hat onto her head. To maintain their cover, of course.

**(2)**

It’s Rumlow’s idea to take Steve to see the Dodgers when they’re in town. Usually it’s Natasha whispering increasingly creative ways to kill Rumlow in Clint’s ear at team happy hours, so he’s surprised when she says they’ll be there.

“I thought you hated baseball,” Clint says as they ride the Metro to the game.

Natasha shrugs, which is about as close as she ever comes to expressing an opinion. “I want to see Steve’s face when he realizes a beer costs $17.50.”

And she laces her fingers through Clint’s.

Steve, predictably, balks when he sees how expensive concessions have gotten and tells Clint not to buy him anything. Clint, however, has no qualms defying a direct order and returns with three beers and four hot dogs and a pretzel for Natasha. He takes a swig of Bud Light, waving off Steve’s stammered thanks. He’s at the ballpark, arm slung around Natasha, and life’s about perfect.

Until the fifth inning when animated hearts flutter across the Jumbotron. “It’s time for the Kiss Cam!” the announcer booms, and that’s when Clint spots the camera, a split second before it zooms in on them.

They’re together now, have been since New York, but their coworkers don’t know and Clint’s reasonably certain Natasha would prefer it stayed that way. So he’s surprised when she cups his cheeks and pulls him in for a tender kiss that gets an “Awww!” from everyone who’s not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Someone mutters, “About time!” Steve looks like he might cry. 

“Enough already,” Rumlow grumbles.

**(3)**

Clint gets it. If he’d grown up in a Russian assassin factory, he might hate baseball, too.

(Actually, scratch that. Clint doesn’t understand how anyone can hate baseball. Even Jasper Sitwell liked baseball. Fucking Sitwell. He’s  _ still _ pissed that guy turned on them.)

But Natasha had asked to come with him and Steve, only to complain loudly about the sun, the speed of the game, the temperature of her nachos. She has a point about the cheese. The rest of it’s just baseball.

_ “Clint,”  _ she hisses when he accidentally flicks a peanut shell into her purse. She snatches it off the ground. “Oh, gross. It’s sticky.”

“I told you not to bring it,” says Clint through gritted teeth. He looks to Steve to back him up, but the supersoldier is either really into the game or staying resolutely out of it because he waits for the batter to strike out and marks his scorecard.

_ How quaint,  _ Clint thinks, wondering what it was like to go to a baseball game before electronic scoreboards and walk-up music. He’s about to ask Steve if he has an extra scorecard when the people on the Jumbotron suddenly look awfully familiar.

Like, sitting in their section familiar. The camera zooms in on them, the screen framed in hearts. Clint’s willing to call a truce and kiss Natasha, only when he leans in, she twists away at the last second to smooch Steve instead. The crowd laughs uproariously at the stunned expressions on both men’s faces.

Natasha smirks.

That’s it.

“Excuse me,” Clint mutters angrily as he pushes past people’s knees to the end of the row, only dimly aware Natasha is following him. She grabs his arm at the top of the concourse. He whirls around. “This is all just a joke to you, isn’t it? It’s like S.H.I.E.L.D. falls and you - ”

“Of course it isn’t,” Natasha interrupts, taking a step toward him so people can continue to pass. “Clint, of course it isn’t.”

Clint rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Why’d you even come tonight?”  _ Because so far all you’ve done is pick fights and kiss Steve. _

“Because,” she says, biting her lip. “Baseball was always your and Sitwell and Rumlow’s thing. I just thought - ”

“C’mere,” Clint orders, drawing her close and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

**(4)**

Payback, it turns out, is a bitch.

“Oh no,” Natasha had said, when asked if she wanted to play a game on the Jumbotron, “no way.”

But Clint, the bastard, had grinned broadly and given her a little shove forward. “She’d love to,” he’d said with a gleam in his eye that said he hadn’t forgotten her kissing Steve at the last game they went to.

She can hear him behind her now, wolf-whistling and cheering “Go Nat!” as a timer ticks off how many seconds she has to identify a song she’s never heard before from just a few bars. Nothing in her Red Room training had prepared her for 41,000 baseball fans all shouting at once.

“I’ll give you a hint,” says the peppy girl with a cursive W temporarily tattooed to her cheek, “it’s Jayson Werth’s walk-up music!” 

And for some inexplicable reason, she  _ howls  _ at Natasha.

“I - I don’t see how that’s helpful,” Natasha says, flustered, as the buzzer goes off.

“Sorry,” the girl chirps, flashing Natasha a dazzling smile. “That was ‘Werewolves of London’!”

When she gets back to her seat, Clint’s laughing so hard he’s crying. “I hate you,” she huffs, and she squirms away when he tries to wrap an arm around her.

“C’mon, Nat,” says Steve, scorecard open on his lap, “even  _ I _ knew that one.”

**(5)**

Tony and Pepper are making out so enthusiastically in the seats next to them Clint for once isn’t worried about ending up on the Kiss Cam with Natasha. He slings an arm around her shoulders and signals for the beer guy to pass down two cold ones. There are perks to being Tony’s friend, like not having to pay for anything. Clint watches the center fielder pluck the ball out of the air.

“Hah!” Thor’s booming laugh almost makes Bruce fall out of his seat. “Weakling!” the Asgardian taunts as the batter walks back to the dugout. “That was a puny hit!”

Clint has to bury his face in Natasha’s shoulder to hide his laughter. He breathes in her shampoo as Steve launches into a long-winded explanation about how, no, it takes a tremendous amount of power to hit a baseball that far. Steve may’ve made it his mission to explain the game to Thor, but Clint can tell the supersoldier’s patience is wearing thin.

“You’re ugly!” Thor bellows as the next batter steps up to the plate.

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “He’s on our team,” he says wearily.

Tony comes up for air just long enough to call down the row, “You know, Thor, there are people saying the pitcher looks like you.”

“Baby Thor,” Thor chortles. “Verily, he looks like me in my adolescence.” He downs the rest of his beer and crushes the can with his fist. “Another!” He’s tossed a Bud Light Lime, which he’s been doctoring with Asgardian mead. He belches loudly.

That’s when Clint sees the overhead camera. His brow furrows. He thought for sure they’d be safe in the seats behind home plate. But no, there he is on the Kiss Cam, wedged in between Natasha and Steve. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Tony rubbing his fingers together, mouthing,  _ “Money, money, money.” _

Clint does the only thing he can do.

He kisses Steve.

**(+1)**

“Well,” says Natasha, “what do you think?” It takes her several seconds to figure out how to park Clint’s wheelchair. Steve, Sam, T’Challa, they’d all tried to warn her. And she knew, of course, that Clint had been tortured at the Raft. Still, seeing him like this, hamstrung, his left arm immobilized in a sling, it’s hard. It’s really hard. He says he’s forgiven her, but Natasha has her doubts. She bites her lip as she watches his pale eyes sweep over the field below.

“It’s cricket,” she tells him, unnecessarily. “Not baseball. T’Challa - he says it’s very popular.”

“Huh,” says Clint, watching as the Wakandan national team files out.

“We don’t have to stay,” Natasha says automatically. “This was - ”  _ A stupid idea. _ “We can go. We’ll just - ”

He lifts his head and says, “No, this is great, Nat, really.” He winces, though, probably because the angle’s hard on his neck. The best doctors in Wakanda, and Clint still may not fire an arrow ever again.

Natasha takes a seat next to him. On the field, the umpire calls, “Play!” She’s still trying to figure out what, exactly, is happening on the field, when she notices Clint’s eyes on the scoreboard.

“No Jumbotron,” he says thoughtfully.

She blows out a puff of air. “No,” she agrees, “no Jumbotron.”

And she lets Clint grab her hand and bring it to his lips, kissing the ring she wears there.

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't have done it without [lazaefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lazaefair), who's like Hawkeye, but with grammar.
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://em2mb.tumblr.com).


End file.
